Major Saturday night events transition from hostage rallies to anti-government protests

With the remains of just one hostage still in Gaza, the weekly Saturday night rallies that have been a hallmark of the struggle to free the captives shifted to a Tel Aviv ceremony to welcome Shabbat on Friday evening, with family members of Ran Gvili demanding that Israel refuse to move ahead to the second phase of US President Donald Trump’s broad Gaza peace plan until he is returned.

As the hostage rallies ended, anti-government protests were set to take center stage Saturday night.

As part of the October 9 Gaza ceasefire deal, Hamas on Wednesday returned the body of Sudthisak Rinthalak, a Thai farmer killed in Kibbutz Alumim on October 7, 2023, when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists stormed southern Israel to kill some 1,200 people and take 251 hostages.

Police Master Sgt.  Gvili, killed fending off terrorists in Kibbutz Alumim, is now the last remaining hostage taken during the onslaught that sparked the war.

“This is the first Shabbat that my Rani is there alone,” said Gvili’s sister Shira at the Shabbat eve reception service at Tel Aviv’s Hostages Square on Friday afternoon.

Shira Gvili spoke of her brother in the present tense, refusing to use the past tense or even call him a casualty until his body is returned.

“Rani is the final hostage in Gaza… but he’s always the first — the first to help, the first to assist, the first to rescue. Rani is the first one who put on the blue uniform and ran into the inferno,” she said.

“Rani is also my number one. He’s my best friend and big brother… In my heart, Rani will always be number one and I ask that, at least until he’s back, you also keep him number one in your hearts,” she told the crowd of supporters.

She also demanded that the Gaza ceasefire deal not progress before her brother’s body is returned.

“Don’t proceed to phase two until Rani is home,” she said. “Force Hamas to bring Rani back to the country he loved so much.”

Trump’s administration is aiming to announce the transition to the second phase of its Gaza peace plan in about two weeks, a US official confirmed to The Times of Israel on Thursday. The second phase will see Israel stage further withdrawals in Gaza as an international force and administration start taking power in the Strip.

Under the first phase, Israel staged an initial withdrawal in the Strip and Hamas released the last 20 living hostages and, to date, the bodies of 27 of the 28 deceased hostages, including a soldier killed fighting in the 2014 Gaza war.

Citing a need to “adjust to the new reality,” the Gvili family announced earlier in the week that, as the final hostage family, they had agreed with the Hostages and Missing Families Forum to end the mass Saturday night rallies that the forum has held there for the past two years.

The family said it decided to instead use the Forum’s Friday afternoon gathering, organized most weeks by one of the kibbutz communities from the Gaza envelope region, as a rally for Ran. Among those in attendance this Friday was former hostage Yocheved Lifshitz, whose slain husband Oded’s remains were returned by Hamas in February as part of the last Gaza ceasefire.

Anti-government activists to rally at Tel Aviv’s Habima Square

With no Families Forum rally, the anti-government protest planned at Habima Square — about four blocks up the road from Hostages Square — was set to be the only large demonstration in Tel Aviv on Saturday night.

The Habima rally attracts some opposition parties and an assortment of protest groups, ranging from reservists calling for an end to the Haredi military service exemption to left-wing activists railing against settler violence and hoisting pictures of slain Gazan children.

Anti-government groups have also slammed the government’s efforts to codify the Haredi exemption from military service, weaken the judiciary and sideline it in setting up an investigative committee for failures surrounding the October 7 onslaught.

Protest movements were also enraged this week when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asked President Isaac Herzog to end the corruption trial against him, without admitting guilt.

“No to the abrogation of Netanyahu’s trial. No to a governmental whitewashing committee. No to a corrupt draft-dodging law,” organizers of the Habima protest said in a statement.

“‘You are to have the same law for the foreigner and the native-born’ — one law for everyone,” the statement said, quoting Leviticus. “We’ll fight until Israel is a democracy.”

Protesters on Saturday night will march to Habima from the Begin-Kaplan interchange, site of the 2023 protests against the government’s judicial overhaul, the statement said.

Set to speak at Habima is Maayan Sherman, whose soldier son Ran was killed in Hamas captivity in November 2023 as a “byproduct” of an Israeli strike, according to an IDF probe. Prominent anti-government activist Shikma Bressler is set to MC the rally.

In Jerusalem, anti-government protesters will march from near Netanyahu’s residence on Aza Street to Herzog’s residence on HaNasi street.

Meanwhile, Haaretz reported Friday that the Haifa municipality had informed organizers of the city’s weekly People’s Protest that they would no longer be able to hold the protest at the major Horev Center interchange, where the demonstrations have taken place for years.

According to the report, the municipality did not provide a “substantive” rationale for the decision, and is set to offer the organizers to make use of the Romema arena, which is less central. Organizers reportedly accused the municipality of caving to the far right.

The municipality said in a statement to Haaretz that it does not plan to prevent organizers from holding the protest.

“They were informed that the municipality would work to find a new site for the protest,” said the municipality, adding that it would hold a meeting with the organizers in the coming days “to coordinate a new central location.”